Compliance & Regulation

A solicitor who failed to report that a fee-earner he employed had been convicted of an immigration offence has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Two directors of an alternative business structure have been fined for not supervising a branch office where a fellow director and a bogus solicitor carried out a £3.3m property fraud.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has published details of fines levied against six law firms for failing to confirm in time that they had a compliant anti-money laundering firm-wide risk assessment.

A solicitor who charged a client’s estate fees of over £9,000 during a period of “complete inactivity” has been struck off. He was both its executor and residuary beneficiary.

A solicitor who held nearly 1,500 historical client balances and whose failure to remedy accounts rule breaches was described as a “complete dereliction of duty”, has been suspended for two years.

The Supreme Court has provided a “wholly new legal roadmap” for professional negligence after its ruling last week in two linked cases, the Professional Negligence Lawyers Association has said.

A probe into the lessons of the Post Office scandal for corporate governance, criminal justice and lawyer regulation has been launched and will push regulators to effect change.

The SRA is to follow the approach of the Financial Conduct Authority when capping the fees law firms charge for financial services claims management work – and will leave personal injury work alone for now.

The SRA Compensation Fund paid out more than £10m to the victims of solicitors’ financial dishonesty last year, a 37% increase on the previous 12 months, new figures have shown.

Client data has been stolen from Gateley in a cyber-attack, the listed law firm has revealed. The firm said it was “confident that the incident has been confined to a very small part of its data store”.